The War Party Rallies Behind Kamala Harris

The vast sums of money which flowed into the campaign warchest of Vice-President Kamala Harris, beginning hours after Joe Biden’s withdrawal announcement July 21, are reported as proof that dumping the latter was necessary for Democrats to have a chance to defeat Donald Trump. Her campaign raised $310 million in July, a record amount for a campaign, which dwarfed the $138.7 million raised by the Trump campaign in the same month.

The media attributed this to “enthusiasm” for a younger candidate, and polls in the last days show Kamala Harris even with Donald Trump, with one giving her a 4 point lead. After weeks of uncertainty caused by the obvious mental and physical decline of Joe Biden, a new narrative emerged through cynically evoking John F. Kennedy’s slogan of “passing the torch to a new generation”. Lost in all the media hype is the “undemocratic” means by which this transfer was carried out, after being triggered by a revolt of large donors and party officials who were convinced that a weak Biden would lose to Trump.

For independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was prevented by Democratic Party leaders from running in the Democratic Party primaries, the orchestration of Biden’s removal and the anointing of his Vice President demonstrate the “domination of corporate power”. In his view, the “new oligarchy of billionaires” chose Harris, a representative of “the party of war”, to divert attention away from the “big issues”, including the “merger of state and corporate power” and “the addiction to foreign wars”.

Now, the choice of the governor of Minnesota Tim Walz as vice president is supposed to appeal to the voters who find Harris too “elitist” and “distant”. As for foreign policy, though she has said little about the proxy war in Ukraine since her coronation as presidential candidate, Harris enthusiastically supported it as Vice President. At the 2024 Munich Security Conference last February, she warned that the U.S. would adopt isolationism and authoritarianism if Trump were elected, and defended the U.S. commitment to the role of the sole hegemon enforcing a rules-based order. America must “stand up to Putin in Europe and [have] a strong U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific region”, she said. Then, at the so-called peace summit in Switzerland a few weeks ago, she stated that it is in “our strategic interests” to forcefully support Ukraine.

Dumping Biden to more effectively pursue the war agenda has proven to be popular with billionaires in the corporate war machine. Leading the way in bundling record campaign contributions have been officials in corporate law firms, Hollywood moguls, and tech company officials. This includes a group of 500 venture capitalists (VC), who set up a vcsforkamala.org website and tech billionaires from Silicon Valley firms, such as Google and Open AI, which are part of the Military Industrial Complex.